Food that cheers the heart

I saw a blogpost awhile back on the Free People blog for tie dye cupcakes.

I thought, "Gasp!  That is so cool.  I must make them sometime!"  And I saved the website on my "recipes" tab.

And finally, the occasion presented itself to take a desert to a gathering so I set about my task with a glad heart :-)  It's quite simple really.  I just picked up a box of yellow cake mix and some vanilla funfetti frosting.  A little note on frosting - if you decide that you are going to pipe on the frosting using cake decorating tools, you will need 2 or 3 cans of frosting.  I ran out really quick, but luckily had some shortening and powdered sugar on hand, so I just whipped up some extra frosting :-)

Make the cake mix as directed on the box and then separate it into bowls - one for each color that you are using.

I went for red, yellow, green, and blue.  I also use Wilton color gels.  They are soooooo much better than  regular food coloring.  You can get them at craft stores and I have also seen them at Target in the food baking section.  Trust me the colors turn out so much better.  Wilton gels ... use them!

So, I am not good at remembering to take pictures along the way so I don't have pictures of the colored cake mix or the next step.

But basically, all you do is drop the different colors of cake mix by teaspoon on top of each other.

I started with blue - so I put a spoonful of blue in each cup.  Then I did the same with yellow.  Then green.  Then red.

In the end they looked like this:

Then you bake as directed on the box and they come out looking like this:

Do you see the overgrown mass of cupcake towards the bottom - that was the first one I did and it was way too much batter.  I learned that it is easier to start with a tiny bit of batter, because you can always add but it is harder to take away (sometimes I learn things the hard way).

I then used the frosting that I bought and the homemade batch to pipe icing onto the cupcakes.  Next, I sprinkled them with the sprinkles that came with the store bought frosting.  Don't they just look so fun and wonderful ... but that's nothing.  Wait till they are cut open :-)

Ready for the rainbow?

Eek!  It's my favorite!  I would seriously get so happy every time I had one because they are just so bright and colorful.  It's happy food!!!